Thursday, August 30, 2007

Berard: It's official...finally

I was going to get into the whole thing about what this blog IS going to be and what it is NOT going to be. Then I figured I should just get started.

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The buzz about Bryan Berard coming back to the NYI as a training camp invitee started a few weeks ago. First time I saw it was on Islandermania, the message board. Then Jim Matheson had a note in the Edmonton Journal about it being a possibility, followed by Berard's agent Tom Laidlaw "confirming" it to the Canadian Press. So you're probably wondering why we seemed so slow to send out a press release and post the news on our website. Fair enough. I'll tell you why. It simply was not a done deal.

Even when a player agrees to go to camp as a tryout, official documents need to be filled out. It wasn't until Thursday morning that Garth received a signed doc from Bryan.

Now you may be thinking this is ludicrous, paranoid, silly. His agent even told Sportsnet it was happening. Just announce it already. Here's why we didn't: until the papers were signed by both sides, Bryan could have changed his mind, signed a deal somewhere else. Or in other words, see: Nylander, Michael.